


Just Go With It

by ladybonehollows



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Gen, Platonic Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 01:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20107171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladybonehollows/pseuds/ladybonehollows
Summary: There's a party raging downstairs, and Quentin just wants to be left alone.Margo doesn't care what Quentin wants (or maybe she does).





	Just Go With It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thoughtsappear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsappear/gifts).

> Thanks to Tori for the prompt, and for supporting Covenant House.
> 
> Check out Drabbles4Jason on Twitter if you'd like to support a charity important to our fave Jason Ralph, and have a fic written for you in the process!

Jumping at the sound of his bedroom door opening, Quentin’s heart sank when he glanced up to see Margo striding into the room. “You know it’s polite to knock,” he muttered without heat, turning his eyes back to the book propped up in his lap.

He hadn’t expected an answer and he didn’t receive one. Curling in a little tighter, he stared at the words on the page before him, suddenly a lot more aware of his surroundings than he had been before. The headboard felt harder pressing against his spine, the quilt cover underneath him felt crinkled, his knees ached like they wanted to be stretched out. If he moved, he drew attention to himself. Mostly, he just wanted to be left alone.

A harsh smell hit his nose, but he ignored it. He was on his fifth reading of the same sentence when he reluctantly lifted his eyes from the page to look at Margo. She’d settled herself on the bed beside him, her legs tucked up underneath her, a small brush in her hand tipped with deep burgundy. Leaning forward slightly to look around her, he saw a bottle of nail polish sitting on his bedside table.

There was no point in asking her to leave, in telling her that he just wanted to be alone. He watched sullenly as she dipped the brush into the bottle, wiping the excess off before running the brush expertly over a nail. “Just don’t spill any on the bed,” he said tiredly.

The look she gave him was designed for murder, and he felt it through every inch of him. No matter that this was _his_ room, _his_ bed. He grimaced, wishing he hadn’t said anything at all. “I just… I had an ex-girlfriend who always used to paint her nails on my bed and she got nail polish all through my sheets. More than once.”

Margo’s eyebrow lifted. “Do I remind you of your ex-girlfriend?”

_What? _He hadn’t meant… “No,” he said, and then took a deep breath to still the unease inside of him, screwing up his nose at the burn in his nostrils. “Not really.” _Not at all_. 

Margo turned her attention back to her nails with a shrug.

He failed to read more than half a page through two coats of deep burgundy and one of clear, but his sigh of relief caught in his throat when she kicked off her heels and magicked away the existing colour on them. Which looked perfectly unchipped, he noted before the royal blue disappeared.

“Why aren’t you downstairs?” he asked, not realising how rude he sounded until the words were already past his lips. _Why are you here instead of enjoying your own party?_

He waited for the barbed retort, and felt off-kilter when none came. She didn’t even glance up at him. “Why aren’t you?” she said simply.

Oh, he was definitely not going to answer that.

He was definitely not hiding from Julia, who was having the time of her life downstairs with all of her new friends. He was definitely not hiding from Alice, who hadn’t spoken to him since he threw up all over her dress at the Illusionists party two weeks ago. He _definitely_ wasn’t hiding from Eliot, who had been standing with his arm draped over Quentin’s shoulder, turned into him like he was including him in something secret, something far more special than the cocktail method that he’d been explaining to him, and in the next second was draping his whole _body_ over the Nature student he was making out with on the couch.

He wasn’t hiding.

“I’m not hiding.”

“Uh huh.” She said it lightly, like she knew exactly how much he didn’t mean it and didn’t care enough to call him out on it. Quentin frowned at her until she glanced up at him. “You’re going to wrinkle prematurely if you keep frowning like that.”

Pressing his lips together, he tried to smooth out his brow but only ended up frowning harder. Closing his book without bothering to mark the page, he set it on the bed beside him and drew his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. Margo continued to sit beside him, painting even strokes on her toenails. The colour looked great on her. Surely she would have done this before the party was in full swing downstairs. He didn’t understand her at all, or why she was here, or what she wanted with him. “You’re missing your party.”

“So are you.”

He wasn’t going to have this same conversation over and over again with different words. “Can’t you just… go see the people who have come here to see you?”

Sighing heavily, Margo stoppered the bottle and set it on his bedside table, twisting to look at him squarely. Her legs twisted toward him on the bed so as not to smudge her toes. “Do you really think that I’d be up here walking on eggshells around you if I didn’t want you at the fucking party, Coldwater?”

He couldn’t imagine Margo walking on eggshells. It wasn’t in her nature. Neither was caring about whether or not he was at her party, as far as he was aware. He tucked his chin against his chest, feeling uncomfortable under the weight of her gaze. “I’m pretty sure you just want me around to fuck with me.”

“Well, that is part of the fun,” she said, and he could hear the smirk in her voice. She was silent for a moment before she groaned, and he felt the bed shift underneath him, glancing across to see her sitting back against the headboard again. “Are you really going to make me say I like you? Fuck Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, Quentin, you really are fucking oblivious, aren’t you?”

Stunned, he continued to stare at the pattern on his quilt cover. He definitely wasn’t going to look at her. The thought that Margo cared enough about his company that she was here to — well, _bully_ him into coming down to the party had never occurred to him, and the thought of it now felt too strange to comprehend.

The silence that stretched between them was his to fill, but everything that came to mind to say made him sound like an idiot, or needy, or grumpy, or… or not the type of person who Margo was friends with. And he wanted that, more than he’d realised before. Ever since Eliot and Margo had adopted him on his first day at Brakebills, he’d enjoyed the way being around them had made him feel, even if he didn’t understand what they wanted from him. At most, he’d thought that Margo put up with him while Eliot basked in the painfully obvious crush that he had on him.

Thinking of Eliot made his face warm. He wondered whether he was still all over that guy downstairs, or whether they’d gone up to his room. He wondered whether he’d even noticed when he’d left. But he wasn’t going to talk to Margo about _that_.

“Eliot doesn’t,” he mumbled before he could stop himself. “Or, he does, and then he doesn’t. Repeat.”

Oh great, now she had more to laugh at him about. She couldn’t _not_ be aware about how he felt, but she hadn’t used it against him before. Well, not before now, when he’d given her perfect opportunity.

She _tutted_ at him, actually tutted at him, as she picked up the clear bottle. “Eliot’s as big an idiot as you are. He doesn't know how to be friends with you and want to fuck you at the same time."

Quentin straightened up, turning slowly to stare at her. "Now I know you're full of shit."

Her hand hovering over her toe, she glanced at him sideways. "Would I lie to you?"

_Really? _"Um. Yes?"

Unbothered, she returned her focus to her nails. "Okay, fair,” she said easily. “But you should believe this. Quit the moping act and go have some fun. Neither of you are going to put your big boy pants on and talk to each other if you’re hiding up here and he’s sucking face with some other loser.” Sitting back, she wiggled her toes, looking over them with a critical eye before she put the brush back in the bottle and screwed it tight. Moving her hands carefully, she worked them in a tut that he assumed dried her polish. “Or — you could forget about him and just get wasted and have fun like the rest of us.”

She couldn’t mean it. About Eliot, or about the implication that she actually wanted to spend time with him. But she was still staring at him, her eyebrow arched expectantly and, well, she’d come up here looking for him, hadn’t she? “Did you mean that?” he said slowly. “About being friends?”

Margo slid off the bed and turned toward him, rolling her eyes. “Well, your words, not mine. But sure,” she said with a shrug. “Why the fuck not? My friends do shots with me, so get your pretty ass downstairs.”

Slowly, he uncurled and stood up. He still wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, except he felt marginally less sorry for himself, and… yeah, okay, the idea of getting drunk with Margo sounded pretty great. “I’m sorry,” he said as he walked around to the foot of the bed, feeling awkward that she’d had to come up here for him in the first place, and not entirely sure what to do now.

“Gross,” she said, screwing up her face. “Don’t do that. Now come on, this party’s waiting.”


End file.
